Serve One another: The Way of Freedom

We love a freedom story, don’t we? We are suckers for a narrative that speaks of liberation and the loosing of the chains of tyranny. The story of freedom, like a good love story, is something that to us humans apparently never gets old. One of the first epic freedom stories I showed my first two boys (when they were way too young) was Braveheart. This was years ago and I thought it was time to bring my boys into this glory of this moving tale of William Wallace and the liberation of Scotland.As it turned out, while I was utterly captivated by this story of William Wallace, who sacrificed everything including his life to see his country set free, my boys were just moved by the spectacle of a warrior painted with blue woad, gratuitously killing other people! Needless to say, it was a parental miscalculation, however it was born of good motive. I want my boys to be moved by the narrative of freedom and what that actually means for us mortals.This Sunday, as we consider what it means to love well, we come across a very familiar aspect of love - "love serves." However, what is strange about this is that the Apostle Paul puts "serving other people" as the way we use our freedom! That is so strange to us who live in a culture where "freedom" is defined in terms of having no obstructions to doing what I want, when I want, as long as no one else gets hurt.Now notice this, that definition is about "freedom from something." I am free when no one is in my way. I am free when I can get rid of this authority and can do my on thing. But what if the way people look at freedom is all wrong? What if the real view of freedom is that we are not free from things but that in the gospel God set us free for something! Free to be what we were made for. And what if the more we became what God intended for us to be, the more joy and freedom we naturally found?I don’t know about you, but I want freedom! I don’t want to abuse freedom but I want to be free. I want the wild freedom and joy that Jesus promised his disciples. I suspect you do too. This Sunday we will talk about how to get it.Blessings,Jim